Workplace spirituality is defined as a workplace that recognizes that employees have an inner life that nourishes and is nourished by meaningful work that takes place in the context of community. This definition, based on three fundamental spiritual needs, has implications for how leaders can enhance work unit performance by nurturing the spirit at work. In an exploratory study of six work units in a large hospital system we used an instrument that measures workplace spirituality. The results led to propositions concerning the effect of work unit spirituality on work unit performance and the relationship between work unit spirituality and leadership. Among medical units within the same hospital system, work unit spirituality is greater in some than in others; work unit performance is associated with work unit spirituality; and work unit leaders likely have an impact on the degree to which work units acknowledge and encourage issues of the spirit.

A decision to offer breakfast to homeless people led to radical change in a church and its environment. Existing theories of change do not fully explain observations from our qualitative study; however, complexity theory constructs suggest how and why such change emerged. We offer four key findings. First, the radical change was unintended, emergent, and slow. Second, destabilizing conditions helped small changes to emerge and become radical. Third, subsequent actions amplified an initial small change and, though not intended to do so, promoted radical change. Finally, the dynamic interaction of amplifying actions, contextual conditions, and small changes led to continuous radical change.We are grateful to our colleagues who contributed to the early stages of this research:

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Our model of emergent organizational capacity for compassion proposes that orga nizations can develop the capacity for compassion without formal direction. Relying on a framework from complexity science, we describe how the system conditions of agent diversity, interdependent roles, and social interactions enhance the likelihood of self-organizing around an individual response to a pain trigger. When agents then modify their roles to incorporate compassionate responding, their interactions amplify responses, changing the system, and a new order emerges: organizational capacity for compassion. In this new order the organization's structure, culture, routines, and scanning mechanisms incorporate compassionate responding and can influence fu ture responses to pain triggers. We shall draw from the heart of suffering itself the means of inspiration and survival (Churchill, 1941: 275). We all experience tragedies in our lives at some point, whether in the form of financial woes, the death of a family member, or a severe illness, among many others. Although these tragedies are personal, the suffering they cause spills over into our professional lives as well, making tragedy and suffering unavoidable re alities of organizational life (Frost et al., 2006). Compassion, defined as an empathetic action undertaken to alleviate another's pain (Frost,